


We three lonely hearts

by CuriousWomble1331



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3188597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriousWomble1331/pseuds/CuriousWomble1331
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the end of Season 2. Mattie spies on Lucien and Jean in the last scene and learns more than she wants to about herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We three lonely hearts

I spied. Though I told myself I wouldn’t. Told myself I was a grown woman who was completely in control of her emotions, who would not give into the impulses of a girlish teenage crush, who would not begrudge the emotional support that Lucien had to offer Jean, friend to friend. No matter what I told myself, no matter how hard my head debated with my heart for sanity and reason to prevail, a few minutes after Lucien had walked past I found myself quietly following his path. For my heart was a glutton for the punishment that I had been suffering over the last few months with every familiar touch, every emotion filled glance and every exchange of confidences that passed between the two.

I had long suspected that there was some connection, some emotional attraction between them. Seemingly from the moment the old Dr Blake’s black sheep of a long lost son had walked through the door there had been a new charge in the atmosphere that seemed to centre on these two. It had been more contained before, before Lucien had run out into the night chasing the ghosts of the past and before Danny had been sent to Melbourne. They had all grown close, knitted into a family by the sheer force of Jean’s will, and her housekeeping. For Jean was casting her light onto the darkness and I had thought for the longest time that this darkness was just the smothering of the loneliness that streamed off the fragile younger Dr Blake. It was not until both Lucien and Danny had left that I realised that Jean was fighting her own dark beast of loneliness.

When Lucien had waltzed back to the Australian shores and back into our life, we had resumed the closeness of family, but we were not family, he was not my father and she was not my mother, and they were not husband and wife. And somewhere, after I had flung myself into his arms as he walked through the front door, I realised that we were all of us, each in our personal heartbroken hells. Me for Lucien, Lucien for Jean and, and Jean for Lucien, at least in as much as he was her bringer of light, an anchor, a permission to push back against the loneliness. For them though it seemed that those two broken hearts might be on the path to mending eachother.

And so I watched this private interaction with the wrenching pain of unrequited love being unequivocally denied. No matter how melodramatic that may sound in future it was my heart at that moment. Even though I could not hear what was being said, I could read the under currents of the conversation in their bodies and in the brief glimpses of their faces. The lines of Jean’s body broadcast openly her distress. Lucien’s body radiated such an aching need to comfort tempered by a careful distance, a careful control of the truly violent nature of his feelings, scared his need would frighten her away. Jean is so sunk in her distress though I wonder if he confessed all his feelings and desires whether it would even register. As I watch the despair breaks over Jean in a wave and her hand flickers to her mouth, its rich red wobbling expressively with an accumulation of a life of grief.

He reaches out to her. And she to him. And they are in each other’s arms.

I can’t tear my eyes away from them even as my emotions swell until they fill my body and threaten to spill out in physical form. I can see the broad lines of his back, his head inclined down to her shorter one and her arms snaking around his waist holding on to him so tightly, holding on to her anchor. Their forms shift apart a fraction and his hands drift up to hold her face, her eyes are fixed on his. I can’t see his face but I can see her face answering the look in his and the grief shifts, melts away into a brief flicker of warmth that I can only guess is in answer to that raw question I’ve seen appear on his face more and more of late when he thinks no one is watching. And I am not generous, I am not accepting, I am instead a violent wash of emotions, as volatile in my own way as my two living companions, I wish that it was me that those longing looks were aimed at. I wish I was the one in his arms at that moment, Jean’s emotional pain be damned.

And if it were me there would be no hesitation, like the hesitation I see in Jean’s face as Lucien’s back telegraphs another shift in his body. And though I should look away and leave them to their well-deserved intimacy I do not, instead my body tenses and strains, as I know that Lucien is about to kiss her. And I also know that Jean will, where I would not my fiercely wounded heart swears, reject Lucien. For I have been playing over in my head that rather strange conversation I had with Jean in the waiting room the other night, when she had been so clearly crying over Jack, and I do not think those words of warning were really meant for me but more a subconscious cry of alarm over the divided state of her own heart.

The moment is shattered by the intrusion of the shrill ring of the phone. The sound causes Jean to jerk out of Lucien’s arms and just like that her vulnerability is smoothed from the lines of her body and covered away by her armour of efficiency. She almost runs out of Lucien’s arms and back into the house. I am safe in my vantage point so I stay my eyes drawn to Lucien’s back which remains turned to me, and it is as if he deflates as he places his hands in his pockets. And I realise that we remain, us three, trapped in our individual mess of unrequited desires.


End file.
